{"id":15889,"date":"2023-09-25T21:00:02","date_gmt":"2023-09-26T01:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=15889"},"modified":"2023-09-23T12:02:36","modified_gmt":"2023-09-23T16:02:36","slug":"fortress-space-truckers-stuart-gordon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/15889","title":{"rendered":"Fortress & Space Truckers (Stuart Gordon)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fortress<\/em> (1992)<\/strong><\/p>\n

A couple of movies I haven’t seen in many years… Fortress<\/em> being the only Gordon film I saw in theaters, before I knew him as the Re-Animator<\/em> guy. It sets up a decently convincing sci-fi dystopia, but no actors are “good” in this, not even Jeffrey Combs. Anyway it’s not taking itself too seriously so why should we?<\/p>\n

The gang:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

That 70s Dad runs a private prison where even an “unauthorized thought process” will get your guts electroshocked (“intestinated”) – after RoboCop<\/a><\/em>, Kurtwood Smith was typecast as an evil boss in cyborg dystopias. Ex-soldier Christopher Lambert and his illegally pregnant hotwife arrive as prisoners, and while T7D macks on the wife (Loryn Locklin of Wes Craven’s Night Visions<\/em>), Lambert teams up with his cellmates to escape – including timid nerd Combs, Lincoln Kilpatrick of The Omega Man<\/em>, and Clifton Collins Jr. of Guillermo Del Toro’s Robot Jox<\/em> remake Pacific Rim<\/a><\/em>. Lambert has to fight a giant psycho (Vernon Wells of Mad Max 2<\/a><\/em> and some Joe Dante films)… Combs is killed while installing a virus into the mainframe by typing “install virus.exe” or something, which reminds me, isn’t there a new version of Blackhat<\/a><\/em> coming out?<\/p>\n

Unauthorized thought process:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

–
\nSpace Truckers<\/em> (1996)<\/strong><\/p>\n

An even sillier movie – I don’t think sci-fi action plays to Gordon’s strengths – but Dennis Hopper is a huge upgrade over Lambert, bringing the charm he omitted from Witch Hunt<\/a><\/em>. He’s a Millennium Falcon\/Firefly-style independent space trucker, beefing with George Wendt over shipment prices, then accidentally gets involved in a plot to take over the world.<\/p>\n

Our heroes in a porta-potty:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Hopper and hired hand Stephen Dorff take a load of killer robots, then get stuck in space while lusting after the same girl (Hopper’s Witch Hunt<\/em> costar Debi Mazar), then attacked by their own murderbot cargo. Nice cynical ending, the guy plotting a hostile planetary takeover (Shane Rimmer, best known from Thunderbirds<\/em>) is now President of Earth – the super-soldiers were just a backup plan should he not get elected. But his plan to eliminate witnesses backfires, and our guys flee after blowing up the president. I’d take a sequel, but this straight-to-video widescreen movie was never gonna get one.<\/p>\n

Space pirates:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fortress (1992) A couple of movies I haven’t seen in many years… Fortress being the only Gordon film I saw in theaters, before I knew him as the Re-Animator guy. It sets up a decently convincing sci-fi dystopia, but no actors are “good” in this, not even Jeffrey Combs. Anyway it’s not taking itself too […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1085,1313,1524,247,454,350,59],"class_list":["post-15889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-dennis-hopper","tag-double-feature","tag-dystopia","tag-prison","tag-robots","tag-space-travel","tag-stuart-gordon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15889"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15917,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15889\/revisions\/15917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}